Profs. McGovern and Dinella Publish Study on Persistent Gender Typing in Sports Toy Marketing

Jen McGovern, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Political Science, and Lisa Dinella, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Psychology, recently published their interdisciplinary study in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research.

Their article, "Gender-Typing of Children's Sports Toys Persists: A Mixed-Methods Investigation," presents two studies exploring how gender stereotypes are portrayed in the marketing of sports toys.

McGovern and Dinella use a mixed-methods approach to examine adults' perceptions of which sports toys are appropriate for girls, boys, or all children. The study also includes preliminary findings on racial stereotypes in toy marketing and an experiment assessing how changing the color of toys influences perception of gender appropriateness.

As undergraduate research assistants, McKenna Douglass '20, Lenien Jamir '24, Elena Rosas-Azcatl '22, and Kristen Williams-Libert '22 contributed to conducting the study, while Jordan Levinson '15, Ph.D., reviewed and provided feedback for an early version of the manuscript.

Sex Roles is a multidisciplinary, international behavioral, and social sciences journal with a feminist perspective, focusing on understanding gender, gendered process, and gendered contexts.